Noizze: Now I know genre is a very tricky subject and I know everyone resists that sort of classification despite the idea of it's grouping, but picking up on the title of the festival Tech-Fest, how would you say the technical element is included in your music?

Keegan: Yeah there's a lot of layering and things like that in our music. It's quite intricate and very diverse as well. Guess that helps us fit in but really I don't think it's something that we even really think about despite our name.

Noizze: I also feel that in metal the instruments are a very important part of the music and yet there's not that many instrumental bands out there at all. Have you found this to be much of a challenge?

Joe: We're just doing what we do. It just falls into our aspects.

Keegan: Really the instrumental thing was from growing up. Richie who's our lead guy was very inspired by instrumental artists from way back. Like Paul Gilbert, Jason Becker and Steve Vai. That type of thing.

Noizze: What's the biggest influence upon you guys musically?

Joe: Slash, Meshuggah and stuff.

Keegan: There is Steve Vai and guys like Joe Satriani and Jason Becker.

Noizze: Here is a bit of a tough question but what would you say your biggest achievement is so far?

Joe: As the Ninjas. As a band. Probably the fact that we did Euroblast last year which was huge for us and now this tour and this festival is up there right up there with it!

Keegan: Yeah definitely, I would go with everything leading up to this point.

Joe: We haven't toured outside of New Zealand before so it's huge for us.

Noizze: In terms of bands in the music scene. Are there any that are your favourite upcoming bands?

Keegan: You mean people that we think deserve more attention? Then definitely Monuments. Although they're getting some attention, they should be up there in that Periphery level.

Joe: Yeah that's one of the newer artists that we all enjoy. That new album that they dropped last year was amazing.

Noizze: Okay, speaking of upcoming artists/bands what is the best piece of advice you could give to them?

Keegan: Just keep doing what you love man. There's plenty of time to fail all that shit that you don't love so just keep hitting that nag (laughs).

Noizze: I'm going to pick up on your name here so this Ninja element, how does that inform us of your presence on stage and your music in general?

Keegan: [Because of] the dude who writes the music really, Richie, he's quite inspired by Asian culture. Anime, Kung Fu movies and Japanese video games as well so it's definitely an inspiration of sorts.

Keegan: But the Ninja thing actually was sort of started as a joke.

Noizze: Well final question then, what do you think of pirates?

Joe: (laughs) Pirates?

Keegan: (laughs) Ninjas would get fucked, how else? Pirates would get fucked up.